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Jo, I have to despair at your continuing to use limes in Mai Tais! To my taste (admittedly averse to sour) they make the drink thin, insubstantial. Go with 1 Appleton, 1 W&N, ½ Curaçao (Grand Marnier is fine), ½ orgeat, ½ falernum (preferably not the Velvet muck). Much meatier. Give it a float of some other exotic rum if you like.

And if you really want to see Appleton 12 shine, try a Tolkien (which is also very good with S&C).

Leslie, I took part of your suggestion. I made my favorite mai tai but I reduced the lime a little:

1 oz Pusser's

1 oz Wray & Nephew

1 oz Smith & Cross
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
3/4 oz fresh lime juice

1/2 oz orgeat

I think this is pretty good. I still lean toward a bit more lime, myself. But three quarter ounce is nice enough since lime juice is running about $1.50 per ounce. To put that in perspective, per ounce, lime juice is the same price as Appleton 12 and Grand Marnier...Grand Marnier in smaller bottles.

Finally DC gets warm and sunny weather on a weekend, so I just had to celebrate it with a mai tai, and thanks to Señor Rafa I now have the perfect rum blend - equal parts Smith & Cross and Barbancourt 8. I was thinking of that for my next attempt, but he confirmed it.

Tonight I have been going back and forth between Grand Marnier mai tais and Cointreau mai tais with different amounts of curacao. If this seems easy I assure you it is not...not, that is, if you want to type (or stand)...even with an almost infinite supply of mint. I can only conclude Cointreau has no place in a mai tai. Not in my mai tai at least.

I have yet to explore other curacao besides Grand Marnier and Cointreau. This is a future research project.

Finally DC gets warm and sunny weather on a weekend, so I just had to celebrate it with a mai tai, and thanks to Señor Rafa I now have the perfect rum blend - equal parts Smith & Cross and Barbancourt 8. I was thinking of that for my next attempt, but he confirmed it.

Earlier this evening I tried my very first glass of Rhum JM. The taste was somewhat funky, in a way that Barbancourt 8 (or Clement for that matter), for me, is not. So of course I made a mai tai:

1 1/2 oz Rhum JM

1 1/2 oz S&C (recently restocked)

1/2 oz Grand Marnier

1/2 oz Small Hand orgeat (recently restocked)

1 oz juice of exorbitantly priced lime

'Tis sad that lime juice is by far the most expensive component of this recipe. Anyhow...garnished with lovely mint and with what passes for a spent half lime. Very nice. Hard to say whether I prefer Rhum JM funk to Pusser's/W&N funk. Much research will be required. It would be educational to try a well aged Rhum JM. Or for that matter a well aged Pusser's.

Contrary to what one may read on other eGullet threads I don't think W&N tastes much at all like Appleton, although I admit to being rather fond of both.

Continuing where I left off -- after pausing briefly to agree with Hassouni -- I changed a different variable:

1 oz S&C

1 oz Pusser's

1 oz W&N

1/2 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao

1/2 oz orgeat

1 oz lime juice (ever so slightly scant, as life sometimes is)

I kind of think I prefer Grand Marnier here to Pierre Ferrand. But next time I concoct a Knickerbocker, watch out! Not sure about Pierre Ferrand vs Cointreau, though I don't feel either quite belongs here. If this were a sidecar rather than a mai tai I'd feel differently.

The funk of S&C/Pusser's/W&N is different from the funk of S&C and Rhum JM. I'd have to say half S&C and half Rhum JM is funkier. Which I like better is hard to say. I do miss W&N when it's not used.

Obviously a rum/rhum can only be AOC when it is made in France. This is not rocket science, though it may be rocket fuel.

On this I reflected for a while. I knew from the corpus of my zombie research that it does not take much in the way of Wray & Nephew to announce itself:

1 oz Pusser's

1 oz Ruhm JM

1 oz Smith & Cross

3/4 oz W&N
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
1 oz fresh lime juice

1/2 oz orgeat

Leslie, I do not find the additional lime juice makes the drink taste weak. If anything this mai tai is a little sweet, though I tried hard to measure most carefully. And while I like strong drink, it would be hard for me to enjoy too many of these at once.

All four of these rum/rhums have their own lovely funk. I just don't know best how to balance them.

All these Mai Tai variations encouraged me to experiment a bit this past weekend, using what I had on hand.

1 oz Appleton V/X

1 oz Pusser's

1/2 oz Brugal Anejo

splash Lemon Hart 151

3/4 oz lime juice (generous, probably closer to 1 oz)

3/4 oz Gran Gala

1/4 oz orgeat

I usually use 1/2 oz each of the orgeat and orange curacao, but I wanted to steer it in a different direction, while keeping the sweetness level about the same.

I have to say that this was one of the best I've made yet. I reproduced it for my friend and myself the next day, and it was still good. Now I want another bottle of S&C so I can try it with that.

Edited by brinza, 30 April 2014 - 09:20 AM.

Mike

"The mixing of whiskey, bitters, and sugar represents a turning point, as decisive for American drinking habits as the discovery of three-point perspective was for Renaissance painting." -- William Grimes

I've been going back and forth, as I am able, between mai tais with and without Rhum JM. E.g.:

1 oz Pusser's

1 oz Smith & Cross

1 oz W&N

1 oz Ruhm JM

1/2 oz Grand Marnier

1/2 oz orgeat

juice of one lime

vs.

1 oz Pusser's

1 oz Smith & Cross

1 oz W&N
1/2 oz Grand Marnier

1/2 oz orgeat

juice of one lime

I am not fond of flaccid drinks and few would find either mai tai version weak. However, by a small margin, I find the four rum/rhum version better. Can anyone suggest any other mai tai rum combinations I should consider?

I can now confirm that using Barbancourt 15 with Smith & Cross makes for a real hell of a Mai Tai, although the 15 is more intense than the 8 and therefor stands up to the S&C more.

Trade secrets and all of that, but you did not give the full recipe. Such as how much rum you used. Anyhow, now that I have Barbancourt 15, I concocted:

1 1/2 oz S&C

1 1/2 oz Barbancourt 15

1/2 oz Grand Marnier

1/2 oz orgeat

1 oz fresh lime juice

Garnish of mint and spent half lime. A little weak, if you ask me. My usual mai tais have more alcohol. But very nice. I have yet to try Barbancourt 15 neat but perhaps now is not the the most auspicious time. My thought is that with this recipe one should cut the lime a little or use more rum.

Now that I am near the bottom of the tumbler I miss my Pusser's and the W&N. This drink just does not have the necessary funk. Nothing else works quite like W&N.

I thought tonight I was trying something new, but alas, this is identical to post #257. I liked it then too!

3/4 oz Pusser's

3/4 oz Ruhm JM

3/4 oz Smith & Cross

3/4 oz W&N
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
3/4 oz fresh lime juice

1/2 oz orgeat

I figure that four ounces of rhum/rum in a mai tai is excessive, even for a mai tai. Even though I must say it is more fun to measure rum by wineglasses and ponies. But I digress...this is possibly my favorite mai tai recipe to date. Pardon me while I caress my mint.

Spent half lime and bush of mint. The logic being to recreate an original mai tai that used W&N, the mai tai ought to have W&N in it. This formula has possibilities. A bit headier than I was expecting. Not a mai tai to go down fast. All the more time to fondle my mint.

Though this recipe is right up there, I think I liked the previous mai tai version better. I want to like Barbancourt in a mai tai, I really do. But Barbancourt just does not come through for me the way it does for others. For what my amateur opinion is worth I like W&N better mixed with Barbancourt than S&C with Barbancourt. I hesitate to admit it but better than either I'd probably like S&C and W&N half and half.

17 years of aging drastically transforms a rum. Plain old whites probably has very little in common with the 17 year old stuff. 1/2 oz WN and 1.5 Barbancourt 15 is probably not far off. Anyway a Mai Tai has 2 oz rum in it....

Your mai tai may have 2 ounces of rum. Vic's mai tai may have had 2 ounces of rum. Richard Nixon's mai tai may have had 2 ounces of rum (though I doubt it). Mine does not.

Anyhow:

3/4 oz Appleton 12

3/4 oz Gosling's Old

3/4 oz Barbancourt 15

3/4 oz W&N
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
3/4 oz fresh lime juice

1/2 oz orgeat

This is an attempt to combine W&N with the oldest rums in my collection. It is a very smooth mai tai and goes down easy. For some reason it is a little sweet. Too sweet for my taste, though I measured carefully. I suspect this version is a waste of ancient rum as both of my previous mai tais were better. I am kind of disappointed.

I see a new rhum from Clement on the K&L Spirits Journal that might be of interest to the Mai Tai set (or rhum lovers in general!).

$30 for a 3yo Clement Barrel Select seems like a pretty decent deal but whether I can get any to see for myself remains to be seen. Getting anything from K&L is always a challenge and so far I don't see it available anywhere else. Hopefully it will be eventually.

Edited by tanstaafl2, 05 June 2014 - 11:16 AM.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. ~Mark Twain

Some people are like a Slinky. They are not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs...~tanstaafl2